Maximum Security
Location: Midgar Sector 06, the City of Glass
Pit’s
@Yankee, Giovanna, Sandalphon, Chai
Word Count: 5156 (+6 exp)
The Seekers' ultimate objective here was to get a leg up in Midgar, either by convincing the major players involved here to cooperate... or crippling them entirely. It would be nice if they could make more allies, but Pit knew it wasn't always possible - and was never easy. With Galeem's light in their eyes it would be impossible once it came down to a fight, and it looked like the group had arrived just a little late to prevent that in the first place.
The opposing forces of Vandelay and DespoRHado began to circle each other slowly, paying little heed to the three newest intruders. Then the air crackled, Korsica shifted her stance, and Mistral's eye glowed a bright ominous red.
Pit dashed forward, sliding between the two women as they lunged toward the other each with deadly intent. The angel barely skid to a halt before throwing his arms up on either side of him with his palms open, the Guardian Orbitars following suit and zipping into place on his left and right. In a flash they projected a pair of opalescent winged shields, putting an immediate stop to the thrust of Mistral's polearm and Korsica's batons. He held his stance and kept the energy shields up even as they gradually began to shrink.
"Wait a minute! Don't you wanna hear us out first?" he asked. Sandalphon mentioned that at least one of them might be open to that, and Chai’s buddy mentioned they needed to talk with Korsica for something. So step one was keeping the women from killing each other.
Both combatants’ opening strikes met with Orbitars’ shining barriers and bounced back, halting the fight before it could really get started. Faced with a new problem, Korsica immediately jumped back to take stock of the situation, conducting a lightning-fast risk assessment on the newcomers. Mistral, meanwhile, saw that Pit’s shield shrank when struck, and instead of retreating she redoubled her efforts. She wielded her polearm like a quarterstaff to bash the glinting surface with both ends in rapid succession, making the boy wince with every strike that threatened to break his block.
At that point Gio stepped in to help her new ally before his defenses could be compromised. After quickly gauging the distance she launched her flying dropkick Trovão, which Mistral saw coming out of the corner of her eyes. She ceased her assault and crouched to defend herself with a wall of arms, but Giovanna’s well-spaced technique finished before she made contact, and she landed with a slide. Mistral threw wide her arms like a shoulder cape to perform a thrust to center mass, but Gio leaped and airdashed overhead. The moment she crossed over her prospective opponent she used her Burst. A forceful golden blast of concentrated vital energy struck Mistral in the back, doing no damage whatsoever but sending her flying away from Pit. Thanks to the circumstances of its use, the Gold Burst also completely filled Giovanna’s meter, and in response she began to glow all over, from more vividly red hair to white eyes to the green static that danced across her skin. Her help meant that she and Pit both now stood right in the middle of the conflict, ready for action.
“Hear you out? Hmm.” Sounding incredulous, Korsica narrowed her eyes. “You all broke into my office! Destroyed my security!”
Chai joined the others, putting himself in between the security chief and Pit. “To... peacefully resolve this.”
“Wow, do you even listen to what you say?” Korsica raised her batons.
Mistral rose to her feet, seemingly in agreement. “Unless I am to hear your surrender, save your breath!”
Shields faded by now, Pit let the Orbitars disappear completely and bid his bow back into his hand.
"To be fair it was already mostly destroyed before we got here!" He told Korsica.
Chai added his own critique. “Hey, they attacked us first, anyway! I was down to hang with those chill tech guys. Even helped them fix some stuff! You’re welcome, by the way.”
“What kind of policy is kill-on-sight for robots, anyway?” Giovanna wondered aloud.
Pit’s attention flickered between Korsica and Mistral, the latter more than a little unnerving with those undulating arms attached to her. The surrender of either one of them didn’t seem likely.
"Guess we're gonna have to knock some sense into them," he said, assuming his own fighting stance.
Gio shrugged casually. “That’s usually how this goes.”
Out of the two, Korsica hesitated a moment, perhaps forced to consider the newcomers’ points. Mistral did not hesitate, but sprang forward into a forward barrel roll, spinning with her polearm extended like a vertical sawblade. “Whoa!” Gio braced herself and blocked, spending some of her meter on Faultless Defense to try and cut down on the hits, as Mistral buzzed her twice before buzzing off, her final spin bringing her back to neutral. Then her polearm extended, flexing like a whip, and thrashed around in a series of sweeping strikes. Gio switched from defense to offense to make her way in.
The sudden attack took Pit by surprise. She really wasn't messing around. He decided he had to lend Giovanna a hand - but before joining her on the offensive against Mistral he looked back at Chai and, briefly, Korsica standing beyond the young man. She definitely seemed less battle thirsty than the DespoRHado agent, so maybe they really could get away with talking some things out.
"She seems like a handful! But we'll keep her busy," he said, indicating Mistral with a nod of his head,
"So, um, good luck with whatever you needed to talk with Korsica about!"Chai mistimed the last rhythm parry in Korsica’s attack sequence and got bonked on the head by her baton. As his opponent hopped back to circle around him, he shot Pit a slightly woozy smile and a thumbs-up. “Yyyou got it, pal!”
With that Pit dashed around to flank the Wind of Destruction. He knew at this distance his arrows would be too close and too slow to get through the barrage Mistral was letting loose, so he'd have to force his way past the whip-like spear with his blade. His bow flashed and spun as he dove in. He could feel the bow's sharp edge slice into the synthetic flesh of the arms making up Mistral's weapon about as often as he felt the sting of the knife cutting him when his parry wasn't fast enough.
What the heck is this made of? He wondered, and more importantly was it possible to just chop part of it off? He swung the sword-bow wide, putting some force behind it and aiming for the polearm.
The strong slash, though not enough to carve through the material, proved sufficient to finally bounce it away. Rather than try to whip it around again, Mistral retracted her weapon into spear form in order to deal with the secret agent who’d just dashed up into her face. Her momentum slid her across the ground and into point-blank range to land a knee strike right to Mistral’s gut, which led cleanly into a triple side-kick leaning on Rei for support. From there she could gatling into a series of
flying kicks to bash Mistral over and over, but she moved too fast and the combo dropped. Gio found her third kick intercepted by a wall of arms that grappled her leg like the tentacles of an octopus, and with a grin Mistral whirled her around and then into the floor for a ground bounce. Gripping her polearm like a baseball bat, she swung for the fences.
Her attack was once more intercepted by Pit. Not wasting an opportunity to get in close while Giovanna was going at it, he sprinted forward and caught the spear with the edge of his bow. Due to her figure he misjudged just how much strength the cyborg possessed, and though he tried to dig his heels in he was overpowered due to the mistake. Pit twisted the bow in his hand, spinning its reversed blades to force the polearm down toward the ground before he was flung away.
Pit's intervention allowed Gio to flip out of the short combo before she took its ender, and the next moment she landed on her own two feet. Not one to try and force the matter in terms of brute strength, which she didn't conceive of as her strong suit despite her mechanical arms' power, Mistral stopped pushing the moment she found her blade pinned. She withdrew, spun around, and sent a flurry of jabs Pit's way. He'd landed in a crouch, hastily throwing an arm up to barely defend against the first strike with a bracer. The bow twirled forward again with his other hand to fight off the rest.
Gio keeping her distance led Mistral to drop her guard against her, not expecting Seismic Hammer to cause a burst of force beneath her and interrupt her attack after a couple thrusts.
Given the moment of respite, Pit shifted gears and let the casing of the Upperdash Arm envelop his own. He thought he must be near enough to land a blow with it. Dashing in closer with a "hyah!" and without hesitation he swung the divine weapon into an uppercut. The disc-shaped cestus made contact explosively, and Mistral staggered, lifted off her feet by the angel’s gut punch. He was in the midst of a follow up attack as the Arm faded and gave way to the bow once more, one half of it in each hand. He pushed off the ground and whipped the blades toward the cyborg, twisting with each move into a triple slash. After his technique completed, Mistral regained her poise and leaped backward just as Gio flipped over Pit’s head to try and finish his string off with Sol Poente. She whiffed and landed in front of him, then dashed forward to try and keep their opponent from gaining any momentum.
As she aimed a skip-up roundhouse kick Mistral swung her polearm, and the two collided, deadlocked in terms of strength. Of course, only Giovanna felt the pain of the impact, and from that she knew she’d falter. Rather than press on she folded her kicking leg to let the arm-spear continue on, bending her planted leg as she did. Then she sprang off it and pivoted around to extend a side kick into Mistral’s ribcage, but though the blow connected, the cyborg was better prepared than she thought. Her extra arms grabbed Gio’s leg and gave her a whirl, flinging her up in a wild lateral twist. Disoriented, Giovanna could do nothing to stop the rigid
thwack that followed and knocked her away, though she’d had worse.
"Gio-whoooah!"Rather than try to follow up, Mistral turned her attention to Pit. In the recovery of her swing she turned her polearm slack, then whipped it down toward Pit’s ankle. The hand at its extremity grabbed hold and the angel suddenly got yanked off his feet, hanging upside-down like a fish from a rod. As Gio picked herself up a couple dozen feet away, Mistral giggled at her captive audience. Her Snow Spikes began to move for the first time, coiling behind her as they charged up for a deadly thrust.
"This isn't funny!" Pit cried as he bent to chop at the limb that'd caught hold of him. His wings flapped uselessly as without any wind or momentum he couldn't use them to get upright. After flailing around he came to realize he probably couldn't escape before Mistral threw whatever she had planned at him, but that didn't mean he was out of options. He braced himself to reflect with another summon of his Orbitars.
Surrounded in raw cold, the Snow Spikes thrust toward Pit in a line, lunging like a frigid metal cobra, but when they smashed into his Orbitars the chain burst apart and rained down on the floor before drifting back to Mistral, who glowered at the angel in annoyance. “What an annoying power. Isn’t there anything else you can do, boy?” She sent out her Snow Spikes once more to orbit around Pit in a ring, all briefly charging up to fire piercing icicles at him from all sides.
"Of course I can! Just -argh!- wait 'til I -graah!- get out of this and you'll see!" His bravado might as well have been a bluff, spoken as he redoubled his efforts to escape before he could be skewered.
With a snarl, Rei leaped upward toward the chain of Dwarf Gekko arms and snapped her jaws shut, crushing the artificial limb between her teeth. As Pit fell, Giovanna leaped up and caught him in her arms, then stalled their aerial momentum with an orange glyph. Rei landed the next second, and when Gio airdashed off her glyph she and Pit landed on the green wolf’s back, the angel with a soft
oof."Thanks," he told the both of them, patting Rei's head. He swallowed the feelings of embarrassment from getting caught in that predicament in the first place in order to keep focused.
Curling her lip, Mistral separated her extra arms, forming them into three polearms she hurled at the trio like javelins. Then she vaulted up onto the raised walkway behind them, where a squad of Dwarf Gekkos were waiting. She wasted no time pulling off their arms to replenish her own and hurling their cores down toward the Seekers like basketball-sized grenades. “A present... from me!”
Unwilling to be blown up or stabbed, Rei got moving - and being tucked in front of Giovanna gave Pit room to counter Mistral's bombardment. While Rei carried them forward, deftly zigzagging around the spears, the first of the Dwarf Gekko cores were shot down before they got too close. It was like target shooting, but a lot more dangerous. Light arrows streamed forward, piercing to disable or prematurely detonate the cores and lessening Mistral's volley with one of Pit's own. Cores that slipped by were too fast to be caught by a twist of an arrow, but Rei herself avoided the worst of it by leaping away from the explosions with her charges on her back.
As they closed in on Mistral, Pit charged the next shot. The arrow grew brighter and more powerful, and when released it ignited a ball of fire that spiraled around it. It sailed forward and crashed through the core she'd just thrown to strike the cyborg directly. In order to take advantage of the short window of opportunity, Pit patted Rei again and prepared to jump.
"This is my stop!"The angel sprang up above the raised platform with a push of his wings. He fell towards Mistral, the Palutena Bow in front of him in a spinning cycle. The blades were locked together and slashing like a windmill, cutting into her until Pit landed, and he continued to press with a wide horizontal slash.
His quick combo opened a couple fresh cuts and pushed Mistral back into the wall behind her. She bounced off it and almost fell forward, doubling over as if in pain–when in reality she was using her extra arms to hide her reaching for the knives on her thigh band. Suddenly the cyborg straightened up again, hurling the blades into Pit, before she pirouetted forward. Her polearm curved as she whirled around in a crimson triple slash, striking with both ends to push Pit into the railing behind him in turn while he deflected the deadly points of her weapon with his own, face pulled into a pained grimace. Then she leaped backward into a wall cling, and with her L’Etranger bent like a magnet shot both sides down to either side of Pit to grab the rail. Her weapon then snapped together like a rubber band, yanking Mistral down on top of him with a super-strong divekick to bring both back down to ground level. With hardly any time to think let alone summon his shields, Pit crossed his arms in front of himself to soften the blow even a little. He hit the floor hard.
“Pit!” Having jumped up to the raised walkway to help, Giovanna jumped back down. She launched a series of kicks at Mistral, who ducked away from the first and blocked the second only for Gio to kick her polearm out of her hands with the third. Mistral cartwheeled away to catch her weapon as it fell, while the secret agent stood over Pit. “You okay, kid?”
"Yep, I'm-" his words were cut off by a wince as he got up and pulled the knives out of him. Pain was clear on his face and he suffered cuts of varying depths all over his body, besides the feathered limbs he took special care to avoid damaging, but otherwise the angel seemed ready to continue fighting on.
"Gonna take a lot more than this to keep me down!"Smiling slyly, Mistral activated her Snow Spikes. They whirled around her in a chain like a ribbon, then floated behind her back in a hexagonal formation like a snowflake. Gio dashed toward her, but when the cyborg lunged forward to meet her she did so with a flying knee extended further with a prong of ice. The heavy counterhit staggered Gio long enough for Mistral to grab her and launch her with another knee, and as she got popped up the Snow Spikes orbited around her. Mistral turned her back and posed, triggering blades of ice that slashed Giovanna downward together. ”Augh!” With a wince of pain, Gio rolled backward after landing. “Just a scratch...”
“Ready to slice off some more?” Mistral laughed.
Giovanna gritted her teeth. So far she and Pit had been doing alright by bailing one another out, but that didn’t exactly count as working together. If they managed to actually coordinate, they might be able to better deal with this multifaceted opponent. But whether looking to prove himself worthy for his spot with the Seekers or just used to handling missions on the front lines solo, unfortunately Pit wasn't on the same page just yet.
Not to mention Mistral didn’t plan to give them time to communicate. She attached her Snow Spikes to her feet and zoomed forward like an ice skater. Gio evaded just in time as her foe plunged her polearm into the floor. Holding on with one hand, Mistral spun around her L’Etranger on a ring of ice, her Snow Spikes arrayed in a ring of ice blades to whirl and slice like a twisted merry-go-round.
Pit leapt away, chancing an actual weapon swap. His bow vanished and the Upperdash Arm formed once more, solidly locked around his right arm. He held the divine construct straight out and fired its projectiles, relying on the heavier rings it shot to shatter Mistral's ice. Once enough of them were broken Pit went into melee range wielding the Arm like a club. It was slower than his swords, trading speed for more power, and he hoped to change the flow of battle with it - especially if he could get a clear shot to use its more devastating moves.
His methodical approach brought an end to Mistral’s icy tornado, but as she recovered from the ring barrage she recalled her Snow Spikes. She locked them together in a flash and hurled them like a chakram, but this time the cyborg was a step behind. Pit ducked underneath them on the way in and unleashed his forward dash attack, leaving Mistral with no other option than to try and block with L’etranger, but the polearm wasn’t well suited for defense–especially against the Upperdash Arm. Its blunt force ripped the flexible spear out of her arms before flooring Mistral herself. At that point Gio dashed in to lend a hand, sending Mistral higher with a
Sol Nascente flip kick. She then jumped up after her foe, and the moment Mistral recovered midair she got air-thrown back down toward Pit.
The angel couldn't help but grin as Mistral was caught between them, though it might have been a bit premature to feel triumphant. He followed up with a kick of his own, hopping into an anti-air stretch kick. After connecting her swung his other leg around to land another, and upon landing he was already revving the disc of the Arm for a back-dash that would fling Mistral right back.
His final blow knocked the cyborg down, and she skidded across the floor for a couple yards before rolling to her feet. With a huff, she brushed the large bang covering her left eye up to slick it back along with the rest of her hair, then brought her Snow Spikes behind her. Ice blades formed, and as she skated forward they rotated in a corkscrew in front of her like a huge drill. After dashing up, Giovanna replied with Ex Burning Kick, using its invincibility to somersault into Mistral’s drill and blast it apart with a fiery heel. She recovered from the blow and jumped to avoid the follow-up Trovão, but Gio herself recovered in time to block the ice corkscrew that fell on top of her. Mistral pirouetted atop her ring of spikes, drilling into Gio’s guard and building up RISC, then flipped her hair as the final hit extended the spikes downward to physically trap her opponent in ice. It would only hold for a moment, but it allowed her to focus on Pit, and Mistral wasted no time jumping toward him with a flying kick.
The Upperdash Arm came up to crash against her leg, though without the mighty power behind it that a lead in dash would have granted. Pit had raised his own leg for balance as it rose to the apex of its upward arc, and with a stomp he reversed its momentum to bring it down on top of Mistral like a bludgeon. She found her kick interrupted, and in the disorienting reversal of fortune that followed she hit the ground, then struggled against Pit as he tried to hold her in place. Chiefly that took the form of her Snow Spikes levitating in a ring around him, icicles forming and about to fire.
His eyes darted between the spikes, Giovanna, and their opponent as he tried to decide whether he should commit to pinning her. He decided he probably couldn't withstand being skewered, and the moment he shifted to dodge or block Mistral pushed him off of her by drawing her legs up and performing a spin kick. He was caught with a heel in the side, letting out a pained cough while he raised the Arm up to fire at her. He was met with a look of indignation from Mistral.
"Don't fuck with me, boy!"
The icicles that had been circling all shot forward at once to knock the disc from the air, and yet more formed to chase after him.
The cyborg spun in place once she was back on her feet, ice-producing nanomachines circling quickly around her to fend off any opportunistic attacks while she regrouped. At that point Giovanna had freed herself and sprinted towards her, right through a group of Dwarf Gekkos that began gathering to replenish the limbs on Mistral's back. Her Sepultura met the swirl of cold and broke its formation a beat too late.
The Snow Spikes whirled around, following the flow of Mistral's arms. She lashed out by swiping her hand toward Giovanna, claw-like, and the spikes responded by sailing forward like a twisting serpent. They smashed against her block over and over until Mistral crouched in order to swipe upwards. The ice spikes responded in kind, exploding out of the ground beneath Giovanna and forcing her to back off again. Then she twirled with the spikes in tow once more to start the same combo on Pit, who was predictably jumping back into battle as well.
The first strike caught him completely open. Gone was the Upperdash Arm, the trusty Palutena Bow back in the angel's hands, which left him with less bulk. The spike slashed a stripe across his shoulder and chest, but on the second go around he deflected them with the broad sides of his blade. The icicles slammed against his weapon, some splintering apart and sending shards cutting across his skin before rapidly reforming but ultimately not getting through his parrying. Mistral pulled back, raised one of her long legs with another Snow Spike attached, and lashed out with a vicious kick.
"This ends now!"
"Yeah, for you!"Pit met her attack with a two handed slash. The bow and ice collided, neither overpowering the other. Mistral didn't back down, unleashing a flurry of spike tipped kicks that continued to crash into the bow as Pit swung and spun it in a flurry of his own. The noise of it reverberated throughout the room until it ended with a sharp
crack. The repeated abuse of the icicle eventually led to it shattering, Mistral stumbling, and the bladed part of the bow slicing into her. Pit shoved her away with the bow then, panting to catch his breath as Mistral went sprawling to the ground.
He’d gained the upper hand, and Mistral lay on the floor clutching her stomach, seemingly unable to rise. For a brief moment she just sprawled there, gasping, but even with all the damage she’d taken so far her enhancements meant that Pit hadn’t inflicted a fatal wound. Her Snow Spikes were still in play, and in near-silence they rose up behind the angel to stab him in the back. Then Giovanna grabbed her, hauling her off the ground with a cold expression. “Don’t look,” she told Pit, her voice deadly serious. Startled by her tone and too tired to argue about being treated like a kid, Pit obeyed and squeezed his eyes shut. He winced when there was a spine-chilling snap, and then Mistral slumped to the ground again, dead. Her dissolution came slowly, and though a feeling of finality hung heavy in the air, things weren’t quite over yet.
On the other side of the office, things had really heated up for Chai. He dialed in his parry timing as the fight with Korsica went on, but she showed off new techniques even faster. The Head of Security had combined her batons into a staff and begun to whip up whirlwinds, throwing Airbursts when she wasn’t throwing her staff or using Tailwind, herself. Chai had to weather a storm striking him from every angle, and he by no means got through unscathed, but the dude managed to parry more than he missed. Steadily the reflected damage wore Korsica down, until finally she’d had enough.
She whirled her staff overhead, using the ultimate ability gained from her fusion with the warframe Zephyr. Three huge tornadoes arose in front of her, and when she struck them with her staff they gained Impact damage and swept forward. Giovanna and Pit ran up to stand alongside Chai as the cyclones bore down on him. “Need a hand?” the secret agent asked casually, nonplussed by what she’d just done.
“Eh, couldn’t hurt!” Chai grinned, his spirit emboldened as he brought his guitar up for the mother of all parries.
Chai's expression brought a bit of a smile back to Pit's face. He separated his bow into two and spun both halves to the underlying rhythm of the place. The whirling wind surged towards them, and each of the three claimed the cyclone closest to them. Pit raised his swords in an X-shape to "catch" one of the tornadoes, and then with a cross slash scattered the winds apart. Giovanna defended alongside him with Faultless Defense, sacrificing some meter to negate the chip damage as she took the tornado head-on.
Chai, meanwhile, protected himself with a furious flurry of parries. When the tornadoes dissipated, they revealed Korsica floating in the air thanks to her Tail Wind. She dove down at them, giving it everything she had as the wind screamed around her. Chai bit his tongue, held his ground, and at the last second, parried.
BWOOSH! Korsica got hurled back in a burst of air, her weapons flying from her hands as her consciousness faded. Chai dropped his bludgeon and ran forward, sliding on his knees to catch the security chief in his arms as she fell. She plopped down safe and sound, the last remnants of her strength spent on the most annoyed look she could muster. “Stupid… robot… musical… powers…”
Chai breathed a sigh of relief and stood, turning to face the others with a shaky grin and a whole lot of bruises. “And that’s a wrap.”
"Another win for the good guys," Pit sighed. He rolled his injured shoulder to test just how hurt it was, finding it was manageable; meaning there was no danger of his entire arm falling off. He glanced at Chai, who was looking a little goofy at the moment.
"Are you okay? You look pretty beat up!" he asked with a laugh, despite being littered with wounds himself. He kind of wished that they hadn't lost Benedict along the way since his healing striker would have come in handy, including right about now. Then again the man probably wouldn't have been able to keep up with the fast paced, high stakes battle they'd just been part of. Either way, now that both of their targets were neutralized this part in the overall mission was complete.
Chai shrugged as best he could with two armfuls of Korsica, laying on the bravado. “Eh, I’m fine. All in a day’s work!”
"How's that, Halo?" Pit asked, looking to Giovanna to whom she was connected.
Sandalphon replied after a moment. “Ah, sorry for the delay. I just got back from assisting team Skywatch. I see that you’ve captured Korsica.” She went quiet for a moment as she remotely observed the slain Wind of Destruction, just now disintegrating into the spirits of Mistral and Sasha Ivanoff. “...And defeated Mistral. Well done. Unfortunately, it looks like we have a new problem. Begin extraction immediately. I’ll fill everyone in momentarily.”
Giovanna jabbed her thumb at an elevator on one side of the room that said ‘Security Chief Personal L.I.F.T.’, where Rei was whining. “Let’s get going then.”
"Right back to the action, huh?" Pit said, though he didn't seem bothered by it.
“You’d better go with them, Chai,” Peppermint told him through 808. “That should be the fastest way out, and we don’t have a lot of time. Hopefully Korsica will listen to reason once she wakes up.”
He carried the security chief with him to the L.I.F.T., met there shortly after by Pit and Giovanna after they'd collected the fallen spirits. Once everyone was on Gio pressed the button that would take them out of there.
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